You are invited to a talk by Heather MacNeil from the School of Library,
Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Heather will speak on the issue of "authenticity and reliability in the
digital environment."
Friday, 3 May 2002
10-11 am
322A Clemons Library
This talk is sponsored by the Supporting Digital Scholarship Project,
funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Please feel free to further
extend this invitation to anyone else who may be interested.
Heather is a noted authority on the history of authenticity and
reliability. She was a collaborator on the InterPARES (International
Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems) project.
Heather's interest in authenticity is both historical as well as
contemporary, and covers both archival records (defined precisely by
archivists) and cultural heritage records.
MacNeil defines authenticity as follows:
"Authenticity is the quality of any document that refers to its integrity
and the certainty of its purported identity. It follows that authentic
documents are those whose integrity and identity can be proven."
Her talk will cover the following:
1. The historical and legal assumptions underpinning current archival
notions of what constitutes a reliable and authentic record.
2. Analysis of the characteristics and components of a record from the
perspective of contemporary diplomatics as a means of assessing its
authenticity. The analysis is based on traditional records and then
attempts are made to extend it to the digital environment.
3. The limits of this analysis as a guide to understanding (a) authenticity
in a digital environment; and (b) authenticity as it concerns cultural
documents, including digital collections such as the Blake Archive.
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Daniel V. Pitti
Project Director
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
319 Alderman Library P.O. Box 400115
University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4115
Phone: 434 924-6594 Fax: 434 982-2363
Email: dpitti@Virginia.edu http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu
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